Disclaimer: This is a general citation for reference purposes. Please consult the most recent edition of your style manual for the proper formatting of the type of source you are citing. If the date given in the citation does not match the date on the digital item, use the more accurate date below the digital item.

Disclaimer: This is a general citation for reference purposes. Please consult the most recent edition of your style manual for the proper formatting of the type of source you are citing. If the date given in the citation does not match the date on the digital item, use the more accurate date below the digital item.

Disclaimer: This is a general citation for reference purposes. Please consult the most recent edition of your style manual for the proper formatting of the type of source you are citing. If the date given in the citation does not match the date on the digital item, use the more accurate date below the digital item.

Educational use only, no other permissions given. Copyright to this resource is held by the content creator, author, artist or other entity, and is provided here for educational purposes only. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without written permission of the copyright owner. For more information please see UH Digital Library Fair Use policy on the UH Digital Library About page.

File Name

index.cpd

▼

Item Description

Title

Page 29

Format (IMT)

image/jpeg

File Name

femin_201109_534bb.jpg

Transcript

IIwidely circulated feminist poster reproduces a scarifying police photograph: a
woman, dead of a botched illegal abortion, lies naked and bloody in an empty room. For
a time it seemed that that image was fading, that it might actually pass into history. Now,
abruptly, it is as vivid as ever. On June 20, 1977, sLx white male Supreme Court justices
decided that Connecticut and Pennsylvania need not pay for elective abortions with state
Medicaid funds and that the city of St. Louis need not provide such operations in its public hospitals. The state still owns our bodies—unless we can afford ransom.
It is a bitter shock to wake up and find yourself losing a battle you thought you
had largely won—especially D C||
when you had fought so by blien WllllS
hard and won so much in
such a short time. In 1969,
when feminists began making militant public demands
for repeal of the abortion
laws, abortion was illegal,
except in special circumstances, in every state. Legislative debate on "abortion
reform" was mainly confined to the issue of whether women who were sick or
crazy or had been raped by
their fathers deserved to be
excused from forced child-
bearing. By 1970 the political climate had changed
drastically. New York,
which had resisted the most
minimal "reforms," passed
the most liberal law in the
country: it permitted abortion for any reason during
the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. In 1973—after three
more years of feminist
demonstrations, speakouts,
lobbying campaigns and
lawsuits—the United States
Supreme Court ruled that
laws prohibiting abortion
during the first six months
of pregnancy violated women's constitutional right to
privacy.
The Supreme Court's decision was by no means a
total victory. It did not invalidate all abortion laws,
and it specifically rejected
the feminist contention that
a woman has an absolute
right to decide whether or
not to bear a child. Anti-
abortionists quickly moved
to test the limits of the decision by pushing for a
whole new set of abortion
statutes requiring a husband's or parent's consent,
forbidding the use of public
funds for abortions, permitting hospitals and medical
personnel to refuse on moral grounds to provide or perform them and so on. Some
states have passed blatantly
unconstitutional laws (like
Louisiana's law making
abortion a capital crime). In
other communities public
officials have simply ignored
the decision, and social and
political pressure has ensured that abortion remains
unavailable, or available only at an exorbitant price.
For all too many women
who cannot afford to go to
a private doctor or travel to
a liberal state, the right to
safe, legal abortion has
never been more than theoretical.
Still, the decision led to
what proved a disastrous
complacency. Once middle-
class women could get abortions, feminists found it difficult to generate the energy
needed to keep pressing
their original demand-repeal of all abortion laws. It was even harder to maintain a sense
of urgency about defending what had been won. The conservative resistance-including
the campaign, instigated and largely financed by the Catholic Church, to pass an anti-
abortion constitutional amendment—seemed a futile rear-guard action. Legal abortion was
popular; polls showed that a majority of people supported it (including a substantial percentage of Catholics). If many women concluded that the struggle was over, others forgot—or never knew—that there had even been a struggle. "I only had a vague idea that
there was a pro-abortion movement," a woman I know said recently. "I just knew that at
one point abortion was illegal, and then it wasn't."
Last year Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which cut off federal Medicaid
funds for abortion except to save the woman's life. Opponents of the amendment filed
suit, and Federal District Judge John F. Dooling issued an injunction staying its enforcement. Defenders of abortion rights were also contesting the Connecticut, Pennsylvania
and St. Louis regulations. Feminists and civil libertarians assumed that the Supreme Court
would declare all these restrictions unconstitutional.
But another major political shift was taking place. Since Nixon's 1972 landslide, the
government's right ward
drift had been gaining
alarming momentum. Widespread unemployment and
massive cutbacks in social-
welfare spending were having a particularly severe impact on women and minorities. At the same time, the
fundamentalist right was
mounting its defense of the
patriarchal family against
abortion, homosexuality
and the Equal Rights
Amendment. Jimmy Carter
was continuing Nixon-
Ford's economic policies
while encouraging the sexual backlash with his opposition to abortion, his emphasis on traditional family
virtues and his unctuous
Christian piety. In the face
of this dual reactionary assault, the women's movement—like the black movement and the left generally
—was in retreat. The ERA,
a broadly popular (and
scarcely radical) measure,
was in deep trouble; the
anti-abortion movement was
looking less and less like a
futile rear guard. Given this
ominous atmosphere and
the basic conservatism of
the Nixon Court, the June
20 rulings should have been
no surprise.
And so, in 1977, for
women without money it is
1969 again. The fact that
the state is forbidden to interfere directly with a woman's right to end her pregnancy does not, in the Supreme Court's view, invalidate state policies that effectively . prevent many
women from exercising that
right. After June 20, the
Court directed Judge Dooling to reconsider his injunction against the Hyde
Amendment. In light of the
Court's new rulings, Dooling
lifted the injunction, ensuring that until October 1, the
end of the fiscal year (the
Amendment was part of an
annual appropriations bill),
poor women would not be
able to get abortions except
in states like New York,
where the state government
had agreed (for the time being) to make up the difference. The House and Senate
have passed two versions of
a new bill outlawing federal
Medicaid funds for virtually
all abortions; at the time
this article went to press,
reconciliation of the bills
and final passage were expected shortly. It is unlikely
that many states will follow
New York's example. The
trend is exactly the opposite; over 20 states have already passed laws authorizing a cutoff of state funds
for abortions. The anti-abortion lobby can be expected -to press for similar bans in every state.
We are facing a social crisis. Last year 300,000 legal abortions—one-third of the
total-were financed by Medicaid; one-third of the recipients of Medicaid abortions were
teenagers. The cutoffs will affect not only the indigent but all women who cannot manage on short notice to scrape up the $150 to $300 fee for an early abortion (late abortions are of course much more expensive). Economically dependent women who for
whatever reason cannot tell parents or husbands they need an abortion are particularly
vulnerable.
PAGE 28 NOVEMBER 19, 1977 DAILY BREAKTHROUGH